


Sacrifices

by Destreza



Category: Hell on Wheels (TV)
Genre: Choices, Drabble, F/M, Gen, Sacrifices, women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-14
Updated: 2012-08-20
Packaged: 2017-11-12 02:59:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destreza/pseuds/Destreza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabble response to 2x01, Viva La Mexico. The women of Hell on Wheels reflect on their choices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lily

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Hell on Wheels and related characters and story-lines are the property and production of AMC Networks, 2011-2012. No copyright infringement intended.

Sometimes thinking about Robert makes it easier. Sometimes thinking about him makes her ill. It’s always best when Lily doesn’t think at all.

A little bit of whiskey helps. She even prefers it to brandy now. Drinking brandy in Hell on Wheels feels Sardanapalian, too obtuse. Besides, the whiskey burns when it goes down and it chars a bit of the guilt. This is not a place of goodness or morality. Principles are dragged through the muck, run over by wagon wheels; shat on, spit at, and shoveled and buried. This is the price that they must all pay for this dream of Robert’s—though with each passing day, it feels more like a nightmare.

Lily tries not to think about what her late husband would say; tries not to think about the look in those gentle, blue eyes, and tries instead to explain to herself how this is not betrayal, but rather a sacrifice as she looks around for her lantern.

All things considered, Thomas has been good to her. She has her own personal rail car and while it’s not a London flat or a Chicago townhouse, it is furnished with everything a proper lady needs. A clean bed, a private bath, a place for her clothes and cosmetics. Thomas was even kind enough to order some books from New York. A few months before that, a violin. 

Not that she needs any diversion; her presence here is strictly about business. Every decision she makes is strategic and careful, because strategic and careful is the only way she can survive. Lily knows how treacherous a woman’s life can be in this tiny and cruel microcosm of a man’s world. Even when pouring over railway maps or handling measuring chains, she knows how fragile her current position is. 

But it’s the only way she can see to Robert’s vision being realized. Its the only card she has left to play. 

She thinks about this as she steps out into the night air. It's cool and there's a breeze, and in the distance, she can hear loud shouting and raucous laughter coming from the brothel. Once upon a time, she had felt pity for those women. Now, she is wiser for it, knowing very well that the only difference between herself and them is a simple a toss of the dice. 

Durant is sitting at the window of his rail car. The dim light makes him look even older than his forty-four years, carving harsh shadows into the crags and ridges of his face; like a small mountain, a geographic obstacle. 

The only way through. 

He looks up when the shine of her lantern catches his eye. 

Lily makes up her mind to ask him for a drink.


	2. Eva

Funny how a brush with death can change a man; how a bullet can make a kitten out of a mountain lion. 

Not that Mr. Toole was ever a mountain lion. He always had all the grace and dignity of a bow-legged toad with a gun at his hip. He ranked of whiskey and the cruelty of a weak little man trying to fool everyone and himself into thinking he mattered. 

He didn’t matter. None of ‘em did. Living half her life as a cut-rate whore and Mohave slave half before then, Eva had long since made peace with her lack of mattering. 

But men’s egos are fragile things. It’s what drives ‘em to places like this, moths to a flame; what makes ‘em dig and sweat and cuss and bleed for at a chance at greatness. The Indian brave would chase the buffalo herd; the American man would chase the railroad and that was how it went. Because be they white, black or red, being given things to chase helps them escape emptiness for a while. Because men don’t like emptiness. They are always looking to fill space, whether its land, their bellies, their pockets, or the gap between a woman’s legs.

Women, on the other hand, always gotta make do. 

Mr. Toole is no longer the same man who used to visit her back at the cathouse. The exit wound at the back of his neck has long since healed and blanched into a nubby scar. He still rubs the spot sometimes. Every time she sees him do it, Eva thinks it’s because the Lord makes it itch so he can remember his promise. 

And so far, he has. 

He’s still not too much to look at, but at least he’s kind. He’s not too ambitious to be unhappy being station manager and he likes coming home to meat and grits for dinner. He reads to her from the Good Book before bed and while he still wears his gun on his hip, he doesn’t posture. He wears it to protect her and their home and everything that makes up their simple little life. 

He's her husband now and while it ain't happily ever after, its more than a woman like Eva could have ever hoped for. 

Funny how a dark skinned man steppin’ off a train can make her wish it weren't.


	3. Ruth

Reverend Cole is not the same man that Ruth last saw as a little girl. He’s no longer the tall, sinewy figure she recalls leaning against the doorframe, watching her six-year-old self play in the parlor, a half-empty bottle of whiskey dangling at his side.  He still had a head of peppery hair back then; a harder, more youthful cut to his face and jaw. She remembers the room being bright with cheery, late summer sunlight and the air speckled with tiny, floating dust motes like a vision from a dream. She had been humming _Barbara Allen_ and mending a little green dress for one of her dolls when her father abruptly announced that he was going to meet John Brown and the boys again.

Ruth watched him go through the window. He didn’t glance back at the house once, and he let the garden gate bang close after him. It was then, with a broken heart and a trembling chin, that little Ruth realized that her father never told her when he’d be back.

Mother had cried hard when she learned the news, and harder yet on days when the _New York Tribune_ delivered. She’d take Ruth to church everyday there was service and together they’d kneel and pray and memorize psalms to sing on Sundays.  As a child, Ruth spent more time in church than in school or even outdoors; her mother would scold her whenever she complained about wanting to play with the other children.

It was important that they'd pray. Her father was a great and noble man blessed with a higher calling and it was their duty as wife and daughter to pay their respects with prayer. Prayer was all that could bring father back to them safely.

Ruth never understood why mother wanted her to pray that consistently for a man who had such great favor with God.  She was always taught to pray for the sick and the dying; the poor, the weak and the lame; the sinners, the adulterers, the men and women who had not yet embraced Christ. Father was none of those. If he was doing God’s work, then surely the Lord would know to protect him.  

Now, after twelve long years, she finally understands.

Her father never understood love, whether it was God’s or theirs.  And though it is more apparent now with his hoary beard and bent gait, he had always been a mixed up and foolish man.

Ruth fiddles with the bottle of rye with long, pale fingers, and, worrying her lip between her teeth, she glances back at Joseph fixing up the church pews.  

She knows that he loves her and that she loves him and that he would object if he knew.  For his part in their little scheme, he is still much too honest to directly play the Devil’s hand.

But Ruth knows that this is the only way.

The miracle that her mother prayed for had never come, and she spent her entire life pining for a man that never truly ever knew how to love her or anyone else. Ruth doesn’t want to lead a life like that. She wants to know love beyond duty and social graces and a father’s approval.

She deserves that much at the very least.    

Humming _Barbara Allen_ again _,_ she takes the bottle with her and goes in search of her father.  


End file.
